Effects of anticipation on perception of facial expressions.

Human beings do not passively perceive the facial expressions of other people, but predict observed facial expressions by employing past experiences. The aim of the current study was to investigate whether and how anticipation affected the perception of facial expressions. A 3-way repeated-measures ANOVA on anticipation, orientation, and facial expression was performed on RTs and recognition accuracy in Experiments 1 and 2. The results showed that anticipation reduced susceptibility to negative facial expressions. In this regard, anticipation might be considered as an effective emotion-regulation strategy. In addition, a decreased inversion effect for positive facial expressions was found in the predictable condition, which might reflect a switch from feature-based to holistic processing.

Do Grittier People Have Greater Subjective Well-Being? A Meta-Analysis.

The present study conducted a meta-analysis to examine the relation between grit and subjective well-being (SWB). The association between grit (i.e., overall grit, perseverance of effort, and consistency of interest) and SWB (i.e., positive affect, negative affect, happiness, depression, life satisfaction, job satisfaction, and school satisfaction) were synthesized across 83 studies and 66,518 participants. The results based on a random-effects model showed a substantial correlation between overall grit and SWB (ρ = .46, 95% confidence interval [CI] = [.43, .48]), followed by perseverance of effort (ρ = .38, 95% CI = [.33, .43]) and consistency of interest (ρ = .23, 95% CI = [.17, .28]). The moderator analysis indicated that the correlations between overall grit/consistency of effort and SWB become weaker as age increased, and these links were stronger in affective well-being than in cognitive well-being. Moreover, grit explained unique variance in SWB even after controlling for conscientiousness. Implications and directions for further research are discussed.

The relationship between perceived stress and problematic social networking site use among Chinese college students.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Perceived stress has been regarded as a risk factor for problematic social networking site (SNS) use, yet little is known about the underlying processes whereby confounding variables may mediate or moderate this relationship. To answer this question, this study examined whether depression and anxiety mediated the relationship between perceived stress and problematic SNS use, and whether these mediating processes were moderated by psychological resilience and social support. METHODS: Participants were 641 Chinese college students who completed anonymous questionnaires measuring perceived stress, depression/anxiety, psychological resilience, social support, and problematic SNS use. RESULTS: The results showed that (a) depression/anxiety mediated the relationship between perceived stress and problematic SNS use; (b) the mediating effects of depression/anxiety on the association between perceived stress and problematic SNS use were moderated by psychological resilience. Specifically, the mediating effects of depression/anxiety were stronger for individuals with lower levels of psychological resilience, compared with those with higher levels of psychological resilience; and (c) the mediating effects of depression/anxiety were not moderated by social support, although social support was negatively related to depression/anxiety. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: This study can contribute to a better understanding of how and when perceived stress increases the risk of problematic SNS use, and implies the importance of enhancing psychological resilience in preventing problematic SNS use.